In the end, I was certainly the only blogger left at Barack Beat, but I learned to love the medium. For more from Tina Carter, please visit reallivewords.wordpress.com or the Twitter feed at CarterTinaM.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you.

Israel announced today that it would block any effort by the U.N. to investigate its 2008 military “offensive” in the Gaza Stip or to try Israel soldiers before an international war crimes tribunal.

South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who heads the UN report, said that Israel used disproportionate force which resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians and caused widespread damage to the area. The report is largely grounded in the mass of human rights reports released in 2009.

The Associated Press reports, “But the U.N. report could carry much more weight, both because it was authored by a widely respected former war crimes prosecutor and because it could ultimately lead to charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court.”

Pundits suspects that the United States, which is known for playing the veto card for Israel in the Security Council, would block the prosecution of Israeli officials in the ICC. Rather, political actors here are awaiting the result of the Palestinian Authority’s request to join the ICC. If its membership is approved, the prosecution will bypass the Security Council.

In Israel, the report produced an uproar, with President Shimon Peres calling it a “mockery of history,” and many officials eliciting barbs about Anti-Semitism.

The AP reports,

Goldstone is a former South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israel, was well aware that his work would draw fire. As a condition for heading the inquiry, he insisted that the panel look at the actions of Palestinian militants.

… Israel launched the three-week war in late December to quash Palestinian militants in Gaza who had bombarded southern Israel for years with rocket and mortar fire.

Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, including hundreds of civilians, and thousands more were wounded. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping craft an interim 1993 peace agreement with the Palestinians, said the Goldstone report “makes a mockery of history.”

“It draws no distinction between the attacker and the attacked,” Peres said. “The report essentially grants legitimacy to acts of terrorism, shooting and killing, and ignores the right and duty of any country to self defense, as outlined in the U.N. charter.”

In his statement, however, Peres, founder of one of the first settlements in the West Bank, ignores the phrase “disproportionate use of force,” which grants legitimacy to the offensive.

At this time, both Hamas and Israel are citing self-defense for their actions December 2008 and onward.

The U.N. investigators recommended the Security Council require both sides to launch credible probes into the conflict within three months, and to follow that up with action in their courts.

If either side refuses, it said the U.N. should refer the evidence for prosecution by the International Criminal Court, a permanent war crimes tribunal, within six months.

Deputy Foreign Minister David Ayalon told the American Jewish Committee in New York, “The Goldstone Report should be treated like the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism, thus we must mobilize and act with all force against the report in order to remove it.”

According to Haa’retz, Ayalon plans to meet with Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN to discuss ways to minimize the report’s damage to Israel’s reputation.

Time Magazine writes,

What worries authorities in Jerusalem is that many European countries are signatories to a Geneva Convention that allows their courts to arrest and prosecute individuals accused of committing war crimes in other countries. Such legal options, Israel fears, may be used to bring politically motivated charges against its citizens. The daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday that Israel’s Foreign and Justice ministries have begun drawing up lists of law firms in different European countries that could be enlisted to defend Israelis in any future cases.

A man in a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman watches the US President's address to the Middle East and Muslims June 4th. The Guardian

Bedouin Transjordanians seem to have a positive attitude towards Obama, but not the US government. As tribal Transjordanians, they have a higher esteem towards the monarchy and respect the king’s traditional ties to the US. For instance, my host family’s Bedouin grandfather used to travel with King Hussein and named his sons after the princes. For the Bedouins I believe the Iraq war was a major factor that hurt their perception of the American administration, since there was a time before Iraq’s sanction that they helped the Jordanian economy by providing subsidized oil. Hence, many other students were also surprised to find their Bedouin households decorated with portraits of Saddam Hussein. Likewise, my Bedouin grandfather said Obama was a good man and so was Saddam, while Bush was majnun (so in the twist of analogy meant he approved of Obama on some level). How Obama handles the Iraq situation might be important in changing their perception about the US. A continued perception of the US as an aggressor and an occupying force will hit the traditional tribal sensibilities the wrong way.

As senator, Obama toured the Middle East to engender enthusiasm for a new era of US-Arab relations. Handout/Getty Images Europe

Earlier this month, however, Netanyahu agreed to a partial halt of settlement activity. The move is not a formal moratorium however. According to the AP, Israel has not issued settlement permits in months, and will halt activity until peace talks can proceed.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who has been working to reconcile the Palestinian factions, is not moved by the temporary solution. During his first visit in 5 years to the Oval Office, Mubarak commented,

“This issue has been going on 60 years, and we cannot afford wasting more time because violence will increase,” the 81-year-old Mubarak said, speaking through an interpreter. “We need to move to the final status solution. … The Israelis said talk about a temporary solution. I told them, ‘No, forget about the temporary solution, forget about temporary borders.’ That’s why I came today to talk to President Obama to move forward on this issue.”

Worsening the situation is Israel’s ever more icy relationship with the Obama administration. Israeli-US relations in 2009 have been characterized by harsh words and, to some degree, paranoia. President Obama has taken the hardest-line stance with Israel than any other president to date. The Administration has veered from Israel’s positions on how to deal with the conflict and also on a nuclear Iran, and in doing so,  the Administration has lost favor among the Israeli right. Even his chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel is losing clout with Israeli political actors.

Politico reports,

An observant Jew with deep ties to Israel, Emanuel is viewed as something of a native son, his rise through the ranks of American politics celebrated by Israelis who reveled in details such as his childhood summers spent in Israel and his volunteer stint during the first Gulf War in an Israeli military program for civilians.

… But in a dramatic emotional shift, Israelis have become increasingly disenchanted with Emanuel, and the disappointment is especially intense on the Israeli right, which supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his opposition to Obama’s call for ceasing settlement activity.

As Obama’s most senior Jewish proxy, Emmanuel faces the impact of Israel’s “widespread unhappiness” with the Administration. Both Emmanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod have been called “self-hating Jews” by the Israeli Prime Minister, Haaretz reports. Although Netanyahu’s spokespeople have denied the allegation, the sentiment is widely publicized and shared  in Israel.

While the temporary halt on settlements buys time for all nations involved, a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference may further upset this nebulous state of affairs. President Obama hopes to convene a meeting of heads of state on September 24th to discuss nuclear terrorism and global disarmament, and Israel’s alleged nuclear power program may end up on trail or a target of suspicion and accusation.

Obama also has another summit planned for March 9 and 10, which will stir up animosity among nations. Arab states will undoubtedly use Israel’s alleged nuclear program to counter Obama’s plans for a nuclear-free Middle East, and the Jewish state will crop up national security issues as a reason to remain laconic and mulish on the issue.

Despite the laundry list of conflicts and entanglements, Obama is optimistic about the future of the peace talks and is not worried about lost ground.

Although the ship contained rockets rather than nukes, the discovery does not bode well for the international reputation of either North Korea or Iran.

North Korea has only recently developed a more conciliatory stance towards South Korea and the U.S., the Associated Press reports, and Iran has only just begun to produce nuclear fuel at a slower rate and has increased U.N. access to its main nuclear complex in Natanz and Arak.

Still,  contention between Iran and the U.S. rages.

Iran’s chief representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the AP, “America alleges that Iran has a Manhattan Project” to build a bomb, Soltanieh said. “This is ridiculous. This game is enough. It should be over. … We have tried to take a very logical and pragmatic approach.”

The fate of a nuclear Iran will be decided after September 2nd during a meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board. President Obama has said that sanctions will be tightened if Iran does not stop enriching uranium. However, if Iran does end it’s nuclear program, Obama has promised trade and commercial benefits.

It is doubtful whether an economically-based ultimatum can address an issue that is largely ideological. Can commerce and trade substitute national (and regional) pride? That remains to be seen, but it is just as unlikely that Iran can bear the weight of the “severe” sanctions that Europe hopes to put forth after September 2nd.

“We knew that if al-Qaeda in Iraq had only five bombs left, they were going to use them all as the last of our forces left the cities,” said a senior defense official who follows Iraq. “They wanted to create the narrative that they had driven us from Iraq. Next, they’ll want to build the narrative that the Iraqi security forces can’t protect the people.”

Indeed, two months after the withdrawal of American troops, a series of attacks have all but convinced Iraqis that the security troops cannot quell the violence.

A string of coordinated attacks on government ministries and a number of deadly bombings in the north, have rapidly chipped away at the legitimacy of the troops.

“Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says the security forces are partly responsible for allowing the worst attack to happen outside his ministry,” reported the BBC.

Iraqis name corruption as the reason why the bombers have been able to get through the checkpoints. Bribes and other underhanded dealings take the place of inspection, undermining security measures. One of the organizers of the 19 August truck bombing that killed 68 spoke of paying $10,000 to get a truck laden with explosives into the center of the capital.

Nevertheless, U.S. army chief of staff General George Casey said the U.S. military is pushing ahead with its schedule to reduce the 130,000 American troops.

Advisers expect sectarian tensions to flare by the January elections.

On July 23, The Economist printed two articles entitled “Waking from its sleep.”

The special report hits the sore spot almost immediately,

To revisit the Arab world two decades later is to find that in many ways history continues to pass the Arabs by. Freedom? The Arabs are ruled now, as they were then, by a cartel of authoritarian regimes practised in the arts of oppression. Unity? As elusive as ever. Although the fault lines have changed since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 19 years ago, inter-Arab divisions are bitter. Egypt, the biggest Arab country, refused even to attend April’s Arab League summit meeting in Doha. Israel? Punctuated by bouts of violence and fitful interludes of diplomacy, the deadly stalemate continues. Neither George H. Bush at Madrid in 1991 nor Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000 nor George W. Bush at Annapolis in 2007 succeeded in making peace or even bringing it visibly closer.

These articles make no new pronouncements. Their greatest indictments– the anti-Israeli attitude, oil and corrupt leadership– are among the most well-known hindrances to development in the region (see the Arab Human Development Report). The real power in these articles lie in their pointed (even frustrated) condemnation of the region’s leadership. They make no bones about the fact that it is the ravenous scramble for power in the Arab world that has brought it to its ruinous state. It is not Islam or even the legacy of imperialism.

Not one ruler in today’s Arab League got his job through a free election. Whatever legitimacy these regimes enjoy derives mainly from tradition, fear, or an unwritten contract between ruler and ruled: in return for your loyalty I will meet your basic economic and social needs. That may be a splendid contract in times of plenty. But a bursting population is already making it hard for governments to keep their side of the bargain.

“Waking from its sleep” say that a social bargain of co-optation does not endure, and that political change is not a nicety but a necessity for economic and social progress. One gets the feeling that the Economist is not just addressing the Arab world, but is using its story as a parable, an example for much of the Third World.

The Associated Press reports,

Palestinians have been staging weekly demonstrations at both sites to protest the barrier’s route, which crosses through the villages and cuts farmers off from hundreds of acres of agricultural fields.

Israel says the barrier–a mix of towering concrete walls and electronic fences–is needed to stop Palestinian militants from crossing into Israel to carry out attacks. Palestinians call it a land grab because parts of it jut deep into the West Bank, cutting them off from territory they claim for a future state.

Israel has classified the protest areas as closed military zones and troops have clashed frequently and increasingly violently with protesters, some of whom hurl rocks at the soldiers.

In May, Israel’s Justice Ministry opened a criminal investigation into the firing of tear gas shells at the demonstrations. Tear gas shells struck one of the two Palestinian demonstrators killed recently and injured the American.

The AP reported Saturday that Israeli Defense Forces sprayed a “putrid” substance on protesting Palestinians and sent plainclothed Palestinians across the border.

Confrontations over the barrier have become increasingly violent, with two Palestinian demonstrators killed in recent months and an American supporter seriously injured.

Video footage of one incident at the West Bank village of Naalin showed three masked undercover agents surrounding a shirtless Palestinian demonstrator, throwing him to the ground and then calling for backup by uniformed soldiers.

Several rocks hurled by protesters struck the ground near the troops and one of them pulled a pistol and fired in the air as Palestinians fled the scene. Two Palestinians were arrested, the military said.

In his June 4th address in Cairo, President Obama said the Palestinian experience has been defined by “the daily humiliations…that come with occupation,” and he has since pressured Israel to neogitate with Fatah and Hamas. Under these conditions, the failure of negotiations is lamentable and is fortified by ongoing violence on the ground and by Israel’s seizure of humanitarian aid groups, including the “Spirit of Humanity,” which carried US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Prospects for peace have also been wrecked by Israel’s diplomatic relations with neighboring Arab states. In recent months, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have sent an ambassador to Syria. The former after five years and the latter following a lengthier inter-country contention from the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiki Al-Hariri to disparate support from Hamas and Hizbollah.

According to the Obama administration, establishing diplomatic relations with Syria may weaken its support of Hizbollah and unabashed support of Iran. However, Israel has instead preferred to mobilize military against Iran and has refused to send an Israeli ambassador to Syria because of Syria’s singular demand for Israel to withdraw form the Golan Heights. According to the AP, Syria has refused peace talks with Israel since the latter annexed the area in 1981.

The Associated Press reports,

Syrian forces used the strategic plateau to shell nearby Israeli communities before 1967, and Israel fears those communities will once again become vulnerable should the Heights be ceded. Israeli officials also argue that holding the area gives Israel early warning of Syrian military moves and a buffer zone in case of attack.

The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery, and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents. About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.

Senior adviser to the Middle East envoy George Mitchell and U.S. diplomat Frederick Hoff went to Israel this week, ostensibly, to shore up talks between Israel and Syria. Hoff will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barack and other senior military advisers.

Ha’aretz writes, “The Americans believe the crisis in Iran has created an opportunity for the United States to draw Syria closer and resume Israel-Syria negotiations.”

Abbas said last month and again on Sunday in a letter to President Obama that he will not discuss “key issues” unless Israel stops the growth of settlements in the West Bank.

Reuters reports,

[Palestinian chief of the PLO Saeb] Erekat was responding to reports that Israel and the United States were discussing a compromise that would allow some building in existing settlements under what Israel terms “natural growth” to accommodate expanding families.

A U.S. official denied on Wednesday a report in the Israeli daily Maariv that the Obama administration agreed work could continue on 2,500 housing units whose construction had begun, despite its call for a total freeze to spur peace efforts.

The report followed talks in London last week between George Mitchell, Obama’s special Middle East envoy, and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak aimed at healing a rift over continued settlement activity.

… 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. Palestinians say Jewish settlements, deemed illegal by the World Court, would deny them a viable and contiguous state.

Western officials said the United States was moving in the direction of making allowances so Israel could finish off at least some existing projects which are close to completion or bound by private contracts that cannot be broken.

Israel estimates that 2,500 units are in the process of being built and cannot be stopped under Israeli law.

In an interview with Ha’aretz, Netanyahu’s national security adviser called the Palestinian government a stooge, or rather a “disorderly constellation of forces and factions.” Of Abbas he said, “But even with him I don’t see a real interest and desire to arrive at the end of the conflict with Israel. On the contrary, he is preserving eternal claims against us and inflaming them.”

The omission of nuclear activity is not a smart one. Prior to the G-8 summit this week,  Israel was successful in pushing three European superpowers to back a military amendment to the IAEA on Iran in September, and despite President Obama’s decision to refrain from military action, he has warned Iran of the September “deadline” for nuclear talks.

In April, the West presented its own package to Iran in which it provided incentives for nuclear non-proliferation, and it was well-received by President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad who said that it respected the nation’s sovereignty. Unfortunately, diplomatic relations have all but severed in the post-election backdrop, and the president has accused the West of trying to undercut Iran and of even inciting the street protests.